The evolution of Chinese leadership

FEATURE: China's Once and Future Rise, WPR, November 10, 2009

The J.D. Yuan piece is interesting on two points:

1) exploring the one party, two factions reality of the 5th generation--in effect, the coastal-vs-interior struggle is begetting two parties within one (no surprise); and
2) the lack of national security credentials among the 5th generation, which, when combined with the blow-hard nature of the older military leadership (which has never gone anywhere and fought anybody in 30 years and hasn't sustained a genuine war in half-a-century), naturally gets Western analysts decrying a civil-military gap (Imagine that! The civilian leadership talks soft power while the military guys seem stuck on the hard stuff--how Unusual!).

Upshot? These guys are even more a transitional generation than the last one, having lost much of their youth to the Cultural Revolution. It's not until the 6th show up in the early 2020s that we get a Chinese leadership all grown up in the time/space following Mao, so expect incremental change with this bunch but overall a smarter take on the world than the last bunch.

Comments

[Andrew Stewart]

So the question I'm interested in is this: considering recent developments in cross straits relations, could this bifurcation in the CCP lead to an eventual inroads for inclusion of various ROC political elements (and thus also potentially solve the Taiwan issue altogether)?

[Tom Barnett]

Ultimately, it accommodates all elements that naturally gravitate to the larger discussion of "What does it take to build an Asian Union centered on China?"